So, yeah, I will dedicate this to Amelia for reasons that would take two and a half years to explain fully, and to nandini-niyati, although this sort of story isn't her thing.
I guess this is a kind of thing to explore the depth of Illyria's illusory power when she does her thing during "Not Fade Away." The scenario's depth probably is a stretch of what her power was at that point, but... well... she was a goddess, after all, even if she's sort of neutered then. It's also got some contemplation on immortality, alternate dimensions, time streams... stuff that fascinates me, and works with all my other Wesley centric stories, and God knows I've got tons of them. So... I hope someone has fun with it.
"Go then, there are other worlds than these."
The dreams are always the same. They come in a cycle. The first one is the worst, even though he dies in a later dream, or so he thinks. Dying doesn't frighten Wesley; losing her does. It's oddly detailed, for a dream, too. He can smell the chemicals bubbling in the lab, which is something out of a mad scientist's fondest fantasies, not his wife's little nook in the UCLA physics department. He can read the words on the sarcophagus that Fred doesn't notice--whether because of excitedness or some power that this being has invoked he cannot tell. Why, again, is such a thing in a physics lab? It doesn't matter; it's there/ Illyria, another name, a Hellenized name, for the one called Eluria by Sumer's priest-kings at the dawn of civilization, called other names by cults even older, stretching back into the missts of time. He can see the fine particles run up her nose of their own volition, take root in her blood, and burn her essense out. He can feel her fever, feel and smell her organs liquify as the icy goddess takes control. The only saving grace in this dream is that Fred's eyes are the wrong color, wild and startling blue, so different than the waking world. This is why I don't awake screaming, he thinks, when he remembers the dream at all. Some things are better to repress--damn what Dr. Lonergan says--and the feeling of your wife's terror when her heart and lungs gel together in her ribs is one of them.
The next dreams are a blur. A beautiful brown man lies on a cold floor bleeding, and a young man dies from a gunshot wound. It amazes Wesley each time that he sees the gun smoking in his hand; he couldn't shoot anyone, could he? Nothing more vital than a target, anyway. Certainly not a round faced man of about twenty-five with brown hair and soft eyes. He doesn't even know this man, although he is dressed the way Fred dresses, for work, in a lab coat, shirt and slacks. A grad student perhaps? Subconscious jealousy? Preposterous!
And then he lies on a cold floor himself, hand pressed against his upper abdomen, trying to staunch a flow of blood that will not cease to pulse out warm and sticky on his palm, wetting his shirt and dripping down to pool on the floor. So queer. In this dream her eyes are the right color, warm whiskey brown, she's there to comfort him, to hold the sides of his face. He can feel her soft hands scrape against his beard stubble, which is queer on the face of a man who shaves every morning at 7 sharp. He can feel, too, the cold hands of an icy goddess pulling, pulling... maybe that's just death? Fred's face is blurring... dammit, Wes thinks absurdly, where are my glasses?
It's all impossible. These are the dreams of a madman, not a classics professor with a wife, three lovely (if impossible) children and a penchant for bad fantasy novels. Perhaps that's what it is, after all? His father always told him, Wesley, your imagination will be your down fall. All this cowboy junk and fairy nonsense... how will you ever make a name for yourself in a field like ancient linguistics with that bollocks on your mind? Roger Wyndam-Pryce always rears his head in dream land, mustached and horrible, severe as a righteous, wrathful god.
But I have, Wes knew, and it was okay. House in the suburbs okay, even if it meant a long commute in every day. Or was it? Sometimes things felt... thin. There was a mad old professor that he'd been friends with, long ago, and he'd rambled about other worlds, rolling cigarette after cigarette with a right hand that had been mangled in the Southeast Asian jungle. Sometimes Wes wonders if he was right.
And so he lies there, wrapped around her, dreading sleep. When it comes it comes on black wings, buffeting, bringing little rest. He wonders often if he's gay, perhaps. Sexual angst brings great distress, or so says Dr. Lonergan. Or perhaps he has split personalities. Or perhaps he has split personalities, and one of them's gay? It's a possiblity, and it makes as much sense as anything else. It makes more sense than his old friend's rambling, scarlet fields and soaring towers... lunacy.
When he wakes up it will go away. It always does, in the mornings. The paper boy will miss the box, again, and Elle and Lindsay will be up, getting ready for school. Lucas will be toddling behind his mother, as she prepares for her morning class, and she'll be back by noon to take over with the little one and he'll teach Elementary Greek and a course on hieroglyphic analysis in the evening. Perhaps that night he'll go out for coffee with Larry, one of Fred's friends from the physics department, or maybe he'll take her to the Indian place where it smells like coriander and the hostess is a woman with eyes as dark as the old man's soul. Everything is just fine, in the day.
But then he'll sleep and then the dreams will come. He's tried avoiding sleep, drifting through pallid days, heavy purple bags hanging down on his cheeks, under his eyes. Is he live or is he Memorex? Dr. Lonergan said, during a session during that experiment, and laughed. And then the laughter stops and the lecture begins. Take better care of yourself; dreams are just dreams. They can't hurt you.
What does Dr. Lonergan know? He hasn't had these dreams with the blue eyed goddess named Death. The old man might know, the old wizard, but his eyes are the same color, full of skinny madness, eyes that are bloody like a flagellant's back, the red droplets on his thighs, grooves dug in dirty flesh by ragged nails.
Something comes to him at Mario's Foods. The damnable cellular phone that Fred bought him for Christmas hadchirped in his pocket as he left the office after a night class, the "Brandenberg Concerto, No. 5" blaring in his pants. Fred's voice sounds like pumpkin spice sprinkled on the ear. "Hey, honey," she'd said, "whatcha doing?"
"Leaving my office," Wesley had replied, "weighted down with the papers and prayers of students hoping that I'll fall and break my neck. Is everything okay?"
"I'm making some spaghetti and stuff for supper, but I don't have any noodles... and for spaghetti, you need noodles, you know. Otherwise it's just sauce, and some bread and meat... hold on a sec," she holds the phone away and scolds their middle child for interrupting, and then immediately soothes her. Wesley smiles at the thought of their dear faces. It feels foreign on his face, or too tight, like pants that he could have worn comfortably at sixteen..
It occurs him to ask, if you don't have any noodles, why spaghetti? But the words won't come; it's like arguing with a black hole. Every ounce of logic would just be pulled in by her gravitational field of wonderful looniness, and he knew he couldn't resist her, whatever she asked, even if it was after 10 o'clock in Los Angeles. Instead he says, "Yes, dear. I shall be home soon."
"Thanks," she says, distracted by some other child's shenanigans, " and don't you fall and break your neck, okay, mister, cause I love you."
"I love you too." And just like that the connection's gone. And just like that the light is gone, and just like that his wife is gone and he's alone with his thoughts, again, even in the store. There are few shoppers at this hour, and the stockers move like robots around corners. The bright lights are another kind of darkness and they bathe the stacks of cans and boxes, fresh produce by Johnson, fresh meats in the market. They cast deep shadows on Wesley's face and make him look like an older man, maybe in his forties, maybe even fifty. His face becomes a hollow patch of wear above the neat beard that he's worn for a year now. Where are the noodles, dammit? Isn't this a grocery?
There's one stocker that's not a robot; she's a whip of a girl, shorter than Fred, and her eyes are pools of darkness deeper than his dreams, deeper than the old man's dreams. His reaction is animal; it revolts him and excites him, and he hopes she can't see it, although judging by her face she'd just smirk and wonder if he was worth a ride... where did she come from? They come here once a week--thank God Fred's not with him tonight!
Wesley's mind is rambling; it does that. He's just standing there like a fool, hoping that the shopping cart and his jacket cover the unbidden and unfathomable erection that has leapt up from the depths of his bowels at this black flame in an apron faster than it has for Fred in... years, maybe? Ever? Finally she notices him. "Hey," she says, "in your way or something? Or do you just like what you see?"
He's about to reply when she shakes her head and corrects herself, "Dammit, sorry... okay... dammit! Okay... hold on..." she stands up straight and recites, "Hello, sir. How may I help you this evening?"
His penis thinks of wilting as her life fades; now she's a robot, too. No, he decides. This one's not a robot, even now. "Yes, actually. On which aisle are the spaghetti noodles?"
She sighs and her brow furrows into fine lines that make her come alive again. After a moment she shrugs, "Sorry, dude. I've just worked here for a week or two; mostly I just haul shit." She winces. "Sorry. Dammit. Sorry."
"Don't apologize," he says. "Folks who get sent out for spaghetti noodles at ten thirty in the evening are not strangers to 'dammit' or 'shit.' Sometimes, even, 'fuck' is appropriate."
She giggles. "You know, you're okay for a straight-laced looking guy," and then immediately braces, "you aint some serial-killer, are you? Cause I SWEAR that I will fuck you up, dude..."
Wesley's eyebrows raise, "You're not good at holding jobs, are you, young lady?"
She shrugs, "Not my thing, man. Hope you find the noodles."
"Thank you," he says, and starts away from her, disconcerted. He's only gone a few steps when she calls out after him:
"Hey mister... you been sleeping lately?"
He turns, "Not that it's any of your business, but no."
"I aint been either," she says, "so I was just gonna say that I know how you feel. Get some rest, okay?"
"You too, I suppose," he says.Discomfitted, Wesley nods and moves on, trying to push her from this thoughts. He can't, though, and he looks for her when he's going through the checkout lanes. She's not there; might as well have never been. He makes it in for a late supper, reads to Lindsay and Elle, and makes love to Fred in the shower before they turn in with their respective books. Her body still excites him after 10 years and he's sometimes amazed that his does the same for her, that it ever did. She's so lovely, he thinks, propped on the pillows, glasses perched on the end of her nose, clinging, ever in danger of falling off and onto the page. She glances at him over the rims and smiles, "You're gonna make me nervous, mister man."
"I should think we're beyond that sort of formality, Miss Lady." He leans over and kisses her nose, right below her glasses, and she sinks against his chest. Her hair smells like cinnamon and ginger spice and apple pie, and each breath is a whispered hymn. The flannel nightshirt, one of his old work shirts, is soft under his fingers. Both of their scents are on it, their sweat has soaked into the fabric, the DNA strands woven in their daughters and son. This is the best place that he can imagine sleeping, the only place. Why, then, is that dark eyed stock-girl naked in his mind, and why does he have such crazy dreams? Wesley tries to sleep that night but finds that he cannot, although his wife is nestled on his chest. He counts her breath and tries to match his to it, to relax, but knows that this will never work. Instead he just looks at the ceiling, and knows the world's a lie, and that he's dying. The seconds slip away like grains of crushed pearl, the most precious hour glass of all, and Wesley sees the face of death, smells the cold on her and knows that he can't stop her.